Colour square III 1968

John Peart was inspired by eclectic sources and delighted in visual experimentation. In the early 1960s, he embraced texts on Tantric philosophy, Zen Buddhism and yoga, consequently painting minimalist voids that mediate the realms of the visible and invisible. However, after viewing colour-field works by North American painters Morris Louis (1912–62) and Kenneth Noland (1924–2010), Peart felt compelled to develop a more lively, gestural style, exemplified by Colour square III and Before Cook and Columbus II. 

To create Colour square III, Peart employed staining and dry-brush techniques to paint onto a raw, unprimed canvas. His intuitive patterning and colour selection encourages the viewer’s eyes to leap in twists and turns across the flat surface of the painting, lending a mantra-like repetition and jazzy improvisational rhythm to the work. By contrast, Before Cook and Columbus II comprises a smoky, shifting field, punctuated by zig-zagging polygons in solid tones – switching between solid and ephemeral forms creates the impression of a vast space animated with electric energy. Considered within the context of Tantric philosophy, these paintings provide fictive spaces for the mind to roam, encouraging meditative contemplation.